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H. G. Wells

Statistical thinking
will one day be as
necessary for
efficient
citizenship as the
ability to read and
write.

H. G. Wells

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)

It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)

The mathematician
starts with a few
propositions, the
proof of which is so
obvious that they
are called
self-evident, and
the rest of his work
consists of subtle
deductions from
them. The teaching
of languages, at any
rate as ordinarily
practised, is of the
same general nature:
authority and
tradition furnish
the data, and the
mental operations
are deductive.

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)

This seems to be one of the many cases in which the admitted accuracy of mathematical processes is allowed to throw a wholly inadmissible appearance of authority over the results obtained by them. Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 25,1869.

Huxley, Aldous

[He] was as much
enchanted by the
rudiments of algebra
as he would have
been if I had given
him an engine worked
by steam, with a
methylated spirit
lamp to heat the
boiler; more
enchanted, perhaps,
for the engine would
have got broken,
and, remaining
always itself, would
in any case have
lost its charm,
while the rudiments
of algebra continued
to grow and blossom
in his mind with an
unfailing
luxuriance. Every
day he made the
discovery of
something which
seemed to him
exquisitely
beautiful; the new
toy was
inexhaustible in its
potentialities.

Young Archimedes.

Huxley, Aldous

I admit that mathematical science is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a bad thing.

Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind, London, 1934.

Huxley, Aldous

If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.

Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind, London, 1934.

Hume, David (1711 - 1776)

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, `Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. `Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Treatise Concerning Human Understanding.

Hughes, Richard

Science, being human enquiry, can hear no answer except an answer couched somehow in human tones. Primitive man stood in the mountains and shouted against a cliff; the echo brought back his own voice, and he believed in a disembodied spirit. The scientist of today stands counting out loud in the face of the unknown. Numbers come back to him - and he believes in the Great Mathematician.

In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.

Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1945 - )

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.